He held up the honey bear.
“Where do you think this comes from, hmm? Do you think the bees toiled night and day to make this because they knew we were going to take it away from them and drip it into our tea? Of course not. Because we are a higher life form than they, we can make them serve our purposes, while letting them believe they are serving their own. You have been used like bees.” He glanced at me. “This was all but explained to you before.”
Another space suit walked in out of the rain, and went and got a cup of coffee from the coffee carts. I wondered how he was going to drink it.
Tennet continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I know why you think what you think. I have sons in their twenties. I was there myself once, believe it or not. Because you have no responsibilities, you get to sit back, in school or at your inconsequential service job, and judge the grown-ups on the impossible choices we have to make. Of course, if you were in our position, you’d never go to war, or lay off a factory full of workers, or enlist the help of one murderous dictator to stop another one who’s even worse. All moral choices seem easy when you don’t actually have to make them.”
Amy shook her head slowly and said, “You can’t talk your way into this being anything other than mass murder. And people are going to know.”
Tennet said, “What exactly do you think they’re going to know?”
“That the people in the town are just people. That this isn’t so clear-cut. They’re going to know.”
“Even if someone decided that the infection rate down there was something less than one hundred percent, and if they could go to a mountaintop and shout it to the world, it wouldn’t matter. Because the people want this. They want their neighbors to be monsters. It’s why we lust over news stories of mothers murdering their children, and run after conspiracy theories about a government full of greedy sociopaths. If the monsters didn’t come, we would have willed them into existence.”
John nodded and said, “Just so they have an excuse to sue the burger place.”
I said, “You’re … several steps behind here.”
Amy sipped her tea and said, “The people out there won’t believe it if they don’t have a choice. If they see it for themselves.”
Tennet calmly said, “I know you came here to try to take out the warlock jammer. As the villains in this story, that’s exactly what I expected you to do. This would be why we have an entire army protecting it.”
Amy said, “Speaking of which. The guys standing right behind us with the weird guns, do they know that you’re going to have them killed, too? There’s no way you can let all these people wandering around here in their space suits just go back home tomorrow, knowing what you did here. Somebody will talk, right? To their wife or their kids, or maybe they go online and blog about it. Maybe cash in on a book deal. Do they know you’re going to orchestrate something for them, just like you did for the town?”
Tennet said, “I like you. I do. But think about all of the assumptions you just made. First, you assumed that the men behind you could hear you. Second, you assumed that the men behind you have ears at all. Third, you assumed that the men behind you are even men. Would you like to know what’s under the hoods of these decontamination suits?”
The space suit back by the coffee turned toward us. He sat his coffee on the cart and approached our table. Tennet didn’t turn to look at him. Whatever was inside the space suit reached up and started undoing clasps around the neck of its red-tinted face mask.
Then, it pulled open a zipper.
The gloved hands then raised and grabbed the sides of its helmet, and lifted.
30 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
We barely had time to register the face we were seeing before the spaceman pulled out an enormous silver handgun, and pointed it at Tennet’s head.
Detective Lance Falconer said, “Freeze, shitbird.”
Tennet sighed and said, “And who are you?”
“Shut up. Call off the planes.”
“Infecting the whole world to prevent you from putting a bullet through my skull would be an incredibly selfish move on my part.”
Amy said, “Forget it, we don’t need him.”
John said, “He’s right, we just need to turn off the cell phone jammer. Then he won’t have a choice. It’ll blow the lid off the whole sha-rod.”
“STOP SAYING IT LIKE THAT.”
Tennet looked right at me and said, “Is there something you want to say about this, David? Before this man splatters my brains? I’ve been reading it on your face.”
I met Falconer’s eyes, then Amy’s.
I said, “I, uh, am not sure he isn’t right.”
Amy said, “David…”
I shook my head. “I don’t like it. I don’t. Amy, you know I don’t. But … Marconi … he was right. The fuse is lit and this, right here, this is our chance to snuff it out. There has to be a sacrifice. He said that.” I looked at John. “John, I’m telling you, he saw all this coming. Marconi knows his shit. And maybe if we’d been smarter, if we’d handled it better, we could have put a stop to it without anybody getting, you know, incinerated. But we just kept fucking up and … it has to end at some point. And preferably some point before an event that could be called an ‘apocalypse.’” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Guys … we have to grow up and see this through. This is our chance, to save the world. From itself.”
John looked at the ground resignedly, and I knew he agreed.
Falconer said, “Bullshit. They are not getting away with this.”
John shook his head and said, “They are, detective. They really are. Try to put that guy on trial. You’ll see. Your witnesses will disappear. Or maybe you’ll disappear. Hell, your suspect there will disappear. He’s just a pawn like the rest of us. Aren’t you?”
Tennet didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to.
Amy wasn’t listening to us. She was turned, looking over the town, as if to take it in for the last time. Thunder crashed. Rain drummed on the tent.
Amy walked out into the rain, looking up into the sky, her hands forming a visor over her eyes. A dozen gun barrels followed her.
I said, “Amy … you understand why we have to do this, right?”
She turned and said, “Do you mind if we continue this discussion under the table?”
“What?”
The spacemen outside the tent were suddenly alarmed. One of them was looking up at the sky, and trying to get the attention of the others. Radios appeared in hands. Black figures started running. I looked past Amy, squinting into the gray sky. There was, up there, a speck, a shape that I mistook for a bird for the second time in two days. The speck grew in the sky, taking on the shape of a tiny, thin, pilotless plane.
Amy got down on her hand and knees and scurried under the table. It hadn’t dawned on the rest of us what was happening. She said, “David! Get down!”
A pair of white streaks grew out of the bottom of the drone, zipping across the sky and down, rocketing off to our right. I turned just in time to see the black semi truck vanish into a cloud of smoke. The shock wave threw us to the grass, flinging me under the table on top of Amy. A huge piece of debris—I think it was a truck tire—whizzed past the tent, trailing black smoke like a contrail.
I was laying in the grass, my ears ringing, Amy’s elbow in my face. Her tea had spilled on my shirt.
Amy scrambled to her feet, threw her arms in the air and said to the sky, “YAY! YOU RULE, SHANE! WOO!”
27 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
Falconer wrestled Tennet back to his feet, his gun at his temple. Falconer said, “Well, that fucking settles that.”
Amy looked down at me. “You know this is the right thing. Even if you don’t know you know it.”
John said, “Shit yeah, I’m on Team Amy now.”
I said, “Who the fuck is Shane?”
Tennet said, “That accomplished nothing. That pilot will be convicted of treason. But before he can even be prosecuted, They’ll get hold of him. There’ll be nothing I can do about it. Do you have any idea what They can do? Maybe They’ll inject him with Compound 66. That’s a serum that will turn a man into a cannibal. Let him eat his own children before they arrest him.”
Two dozen spacemen were on the scene now, guns raised, creeping forward. Falconer got an arm around Tennet’s neck and was using him as a human shield.
Falconer said, “Call off the planes. It’s over.”
The word “call” triggered something in Amy’s mind, and she dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. “Hey! I’ve got bars!”
Tennet said, “You have absolutely no leverage here, detective. You shoot me, my men will cut you to pieces. The bombs will drop and nothing will change. I’m sorry your supercop fantasy isn’t going to play out like you wanted. But you have no cards left to play here.”
Falconer repeated his demand, but Tennet went silent. Falconer threatened him with creative bodily violence. Tennet gave no reaction. Minutes passed this way, and I sensed the time bleeding away from the bomber countdown. I glanced nervously at the sky, then back toward the town.
And then, in the distance, came the crackle of gunfire.
19 Minutes Until the Aerial Bombing of Undisclosed
We all rushed out, looking toward the sound. Down the hill and toward the highway, where the REPER barricades had stood since the morning of the outbreak. A pickup truck had crashed through the barriers and was laying on its side. REPER spacemen were filling it full of holes.
Then, a spaceman went down. And another. On the other side of the barricade was the Undisclosed angry mob. And they were armed.
Amy said, “I think somebody figured out that they are about to be bombed and remembered as zombies in their obituaries.”
John said, “There! See? It’s over. The word is out. You’re not going to be able to cover this up, doctor. Call off the planes.”
